Tag: blog

Google pays me about four cents a month to run adverts on this-a-here policy-wonk & general bullshit blog, and lately they’ve been running an awful lot of the John McBush “one man” animated gif, which may be running to the right of this image even now. On account of which, my friends and family give me a fair amount of grief. I tell them that I’m not crazy about Google’s running McBush ads here, but I need the money.

In any event it reminds me to run the above picture, which I plan to do at least once a week, until I no longer need to.

Never let it be said that nagging never pays off. For years I’ve been importuning my pal David Newsom, that matinee idol, photographer, award winning movie producer, etc, etc, to start a blog, preferably here on Wetmachine. He’s a great storyteller, as you’ll see shortly, and I’ve been looking for another voice to balance out the glorious wonkery from Harold, Greg, and Howard. I mean, I love FCC policy & sofware geekery as much as the next fellow, but sometimes I think our little wessle lists a bit to starboard, if you will. So I’m delighted to announce that David has tired of telling me to buzz off, and as of this instant is an official wetmachiner.

(David, is it OK that I announce that your new gig is as a producer/reporter for planetgreen? Gee, I sure hope so!)

In the meantime, I’m taking the liberty of posting his innagural contribution to Wetmachine main page, which I’ll do sometime later today when I get a sec.

James Wolcott, whose work I would link to more frequently if it did not so show me up as a pale Wolcott wannabe, has a little thing up on his blog about Penn Jillette, the blowhard aforementioned. As usual, he’s spot on, only this time, with one sour note. He says that Penn Jillette

with his long, lank locks resembles an angry mutation of Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski

Now, that is just totally unfair to the Dude, and I’ll leave it at that, for to make a bigger deal out of it would be supremely un-Dude-like. What Wolcott meant to say, I’m sure he would have realized if he had just waited a minute before posting, is that Jillette looks just like Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen from A Mighty Wind.

After the fold: take a look and see if I’m lying.

The Google policy blog has this excellent post explaining the “blocking premium” and “incumbent discount” concepts in bidding. I’ve sprinkled pieces of this in variuous posts, but this really lays it out nicely in one place.

Stay tuned . . .

For those who subscribe to Tales of the Sausage Factory but not Wetmachine Main, I thought I would let you all know that my friend and ace economist Dr. Gregory Rose has started a new blog here at wetmachine called Econoklastic. You can read his first post here. Regular readers will recognize Greg’s name as the author of several spectrum studies that I quote incessantly, such as the ones describing how SpectrumCo and its wireless allies blocked competitors from getting licenses in last year’s AWS auction.

As you can tell from his first post, Greg is quite contrarian and willing to grind more than a few sacred cows into hamburger. It’s why we like to keep him around.

Stay tuned . . . .

Being ancient is no crime, neither is it a crime to be an ignorant prissy mandarin. Nor, in most cases, is it a crime to be a liar.

But it’s my blog, and I would like to take this moment to call your attention to the fact that the ancient, ignorant, prissy mandarin known as David Broder, just back from a sold-out performance at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, is up to his usual lying ways.

Now please resume your deliberations over which of Harold Feld’s articles to recommend for the technical writing award.

Lest you think I only speak ill of FCC staff, I was quite sorry to see on Mike Marcus’ Spectrumtalk blog that Alan Scrime, Chief of the Policy and Rules Division of the Office of Engineering and Technology, is leaving the FCC to take a job with the Army close to his home in New Jersey.

In the time I’ve been working on unlicensed spectrum issues (which OET handles), Alan has always been a pleasure to work with. A smart fellow who has been just as interested in what the non-commercial folks are doing as he has been with the established players or well-funded start ups, Alan has also displayed considerable patience and willingness to explain things to non-technical folks such as myself.

Sorry to see Alan go, and wishing him luck with the Army.

Stay tuned . . . .

For the next week, I’ll be doing a stint as the “featured blogger” on Public Knowledge’s policy blog. As regular readers will know, I’ve often applauded PK as one of the key organizations fighting against expansion of intellectual property rights at the expense of the public, and critical in working to expand the intellectual commons. I’ll still try to post here as well. But I may just point people to PK.